Susan Martell, AZMember Since January 2013Artist Statement Susan Martell is an artist whose works manifest remarkably luminescent and luscious surfaces and hues that reveal and explore the elemental aspects of painting– texture, color, shadow, light, and depth — in order to better communicate mood, spatial perception, and the tension of high energy and serenity. It is the relationship of these qualities to the architecture and the air surrounding them that give Martell’s painting the sensibilities that contribute so much to the homes and offices where her work resides.

Martell has been painting professionally for over twenty years, and has worked in many media. Her sense of painting-in-context has sound roots in her trompe l’oeil work on walls, ceilings, and floors. With her early training in interior design & business, she ran a successful decorative painting business in the Chicago area specializing in faux finishes and wall murals. In recent years she has migrated to smaller canvases because they “don’t require the use of ladders,” as she says, laughing.

Martell is a summer resident of the Midwest “Art Coast” in the Saugatuck/Douglas areas of Michigan, and spends her winters in Anthem, Arizona near Phoenix. Why these areas? “The color palette is vast, and a constant inspiration,” she says.

Martell attended Davenport College in Michigan and Ray College of Interior Design in Chicago. After working as a designer for several years, she decided to focus her artistic talents and formed a decorative painting business, studying with Miller-Wagner School of Decorative Arts in Chicago and many others over the years. In recent years, she has attended Master Classes with well-known abstract artists in the Phoenix area.